


Digital Love

by abyssalUpwelling



Category: The LEGO Movie (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Emmet and Mayhem are friends and that's cool, F/F, GCBC is in it but has one line so not tagging, They're humans in the AU, Watevra is mentioned but also does not appear, implied death but the characters are okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28256589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abyssalUpwelling/pseuds/abyssalUpwelling
Summary: Mayhem is a tech intern trying to make a stable living, Lucy is a computer program trying to not get deleted as she attempts to destroy Octan from the inside out. A classic love story.
Relationships: General Mayhem | Sweet Mayhem/Wyldstyle | Lucy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	Digital Love

"Oh, get a job in computers, it's where the money is, they said," Mayhem, a young tech intern mumbles under her breath, taking in her surroundings on the long elevator playing a cheery pop song on loop up to talk to her client, "this is only a soul sucking job I don't have any passion in. Who cares if you hate waking up every morning."

She steps out of the elevator and into a large room filled with robots typing away on computers. Sighing she follows the dark red carpet leading down to her client’s office. She walks in to see said client angrily clicking around his mouse as he bunches up his unibrow in frustration at the computer.

Though the frustration completely disappears as he realizes she has entered the room, and instantly puts on a fake smile. He rises quickly from his overly expensive looking office chair and heads over to her, "oh finally, you're here. So, Sweet-"

She speaks up, her voice a little pissed, "you can just call me Mayhem, sir."

He ignores her comment and walks back to his computer, "so Sweet, there's been a virus traveling through the company's network. We've had to shut down the internet to make sure it doesn't spread to a wider scope. And with the entire building here lacking access to the internet, well it’s just terrible for business," Mayhem wonders if that's a pun, but doesn't care enough to ask, "anyways if you could just find a way to remove the virus that would be great."

Mayhem yawns and looks over to the computer sitting on her client’s desk, "if all the computers in here have the virus then shouldn't I need to just install an anti-virus onto all company machines since it's replicated so much."

Business pulls at the collar of his shirt, taking a second to figure out how to word his lie, "the virus, is tricky, it likes to temporarily appear within files, scramble the system, and then move to a new host."

"That's an... Interesting type of virus," the intern walks over to the computer behind the desk, "I don't think I've ever heard of one like that before."

"Oh, well, it's," he pulls harder on his shirt's collar, "someone loaded an old software we were developing a few years ago. It behaved more sporadically than predicted and started the weird,  _ stuff. _ "

She clicks around the computer, the files glitching around the screen a bit. She's able to only open a photo folder. The only thing the virus had left alone was a collection of family photos. Apparently this Business guy had a nice little family at one point, she quickly clicks out of that folder, feeling like it's an invasion of privacy.

She steps back, and places her hand on her head, "this is like a weird problem. Maybe if I grab a laptop and have the virus travel to it, then shut off all broadcasting capabilities on said laptop and  _ then  _ destroy that laptop it would be taken care of."

Business widens his fake smile, "great! I'll have someone bring you a laptop, you can wait in the lobby."

"Alright sir," and heads out the door, catching him mumbling something about how kids don't show enough respect nowadays. She doesn't bother saying anything to that.

  
  


Mayhem is chilling in the lobby sipping at her overpriced iced coffee she bought from a cute little store next door, when she notices someone running up to her. She looks up to see a young guy running towards her, laptop in one hand, and a hot cup of coffee in the other.

He slides down into the seat next to her, looking a little nervous, "hey I'm Emmet, I'm an officer in training," he happily points to a little badge on his shirt, "but since I'm still in training President Business has me do some of the busy work around here, but it's cool because I get to meet new people, like you!"

Mayhem squints at him for a minute, realizing she recognizes him from those photos she saw earlier, "are you, related to Business?"

Panic flashes on his face, "oh, well, yes, but" he goes to move his badge around in his hands, "oh, um, I mean I am his son, but he doesn't like anyone knowing that."

Mayhem takes the laptop from his lap and into hers, "why doesn't he like people to know that?"

Emmet wirls the coffee in his hand as he continues to rub his other hand over his badge, "he's kind of, embarrassed by me. But it's okay!" He tries to cheer up, pushing a smile on his face, "I'm working hard to become a police chief one day to make him proud. Then he'll be okay with people knowing."

"Your dad's kind of a pile of dicks," she says opening the laptop.

Emmet drops the coffee at that statement, utterly shocked, "you can't say that!"

Mayhem gives a tired look over to him, "dude I really don’t care."

Emmet, who's trying to pat away the coffee he just spilt on his suit, speaks back, "you seem kind of sad."

"Yeah well that's because I am," she looks down to his spilt coffee, "you want me to get you napkins?"

"No it's fine, this happens all the time," he does a nervous laugh, "but seriously, are you okay? Being sad, is very not awesome, I mean it sucks."

She does a small smile at the guy, "it's just, I don't know, I don't feel happy with my job. I'm staring at computers all day, surrounded by soulless CEO's and the only thing keeping me going is that I need to pay rent at the end of the day. I wish I was spending my days helping people, making a difference. Doing something important."

She sighs as she boots up the laptop, "sorry I shouldn't talk about that kind of stuff, I just met you and it's a lot-"

"No it's okay! I mean I get that," he gives her a warm smile, "I want to be out in the world helping people. You know, protecting others, making friends out there. But I'm trapped here. Useless, boring, forgettable," his voice gets deeper towards the end. Mayhem gets a little spooked by that. He gets a little spooked by that. They sit in silence as they recover from their spook before he speaks up again, "I should get going."

He takes his coffee and gets up, disappearing the way he came, through some mysterious looking doors, leaving Mayhem alone in the lobby.

She focuses back onto the laptop. connecting it to the company's network. And then takes out her USB drive and plugs it into the laptop to start installing so system analysis junk onto it.

And then the laptop pings. And then it pings again. And then the background screen switches from the default stock photo of the sky to a bright glitchy pink image that has way too many jpeg artifacts to be recognizable as anything.

Mayhem blinks for a second, caught off guard by the sudden change, but then quickly goes,  _ oh this must be the virus _ and goes to quickly start running some of her software off her flashdrive.

As it boots up the laptop dings again, and the tech intern finally realizes there’s some sort of instant messenger application open. And the device is receiving messages. 

With her software already loaded and recording all processes occurring on the laptop she ventures over and opens the messaging application.

[Chatroom Created 1/29/2013]

[Wyldstyle Entered the Chatroom]

[User: Wyldstyle uploaded corruption.exe]

**Wyldstyle: wait you’re not an Octan employee, who are you?**

Mayhem looks at the bright pink text that had popped up on the screen. Maybe it would be good to just ignore this supposed hacker and focus on extracting info. Buuuuuut, if she talked to them it would keep them connected longer and give her software more time to track down where the signal was coming from.

ADMIN: An intern from the Systarian Tech Corp that Octan contracted out.

**Wyldstyle: ooooh** **  
** **Wyldstyle: youre some kind of nerd**

ADMIN: Very astute observation.

ADMIN: Now if I can ask the same question, who are you?

**Wyldstyle: uh** **  
** **Wyldstyle: wyldstyle**

**Wyldstyle: says it right there on the screen**

ADMIN: And what do you hope to achieve by destroying the Octan machines?   
**Wyldstyle: i want to get out**

Mayhem looks a little taken back by that statement, not really sure what to make of it. She quickly glances at the tracking software running, but it’s not giving a new location yet.

ADMIN: Out of what exactly, if I may ask?   
**Wyldstyle: out of octan**

ADMIN: Are you an employee that wants to get fired?

**Wyldstyle: no** **  
** **Wyldstyle: im** **  
** **Wyldstyle: its complicated**

**Wyldstyle: but if i can just get to a device that connects to the internet i can get out of here**

**Wyldstyle: i wouldnt bother with this octan [CENSORED] anymore**

ADMIN: I’m sorry I’m not really following but it sounds like you’re roleplaying an emoji movie character right now and I can’t take you seriously.

[Wyldstyle has left the Chatroom]

[Chatroom has been archived]

Mayhem sits back and kind of takes a moment to let that conversation settle in. It seems to her that there’s some sort of hacker inside of Octan who’s messing around and just screwing with people as a complicated power move.

She opens up the software that had been tracking the information of the virus. And noticed some weird data on her end. There was no evidence of the hacker sending messages, all messages she had seen originated from the computer. It could be that whatever she talked to was some sort of chatbot meant for distraction. But the device also showed that whatever had entered the laptop had completely left, even taking that uploaded corruption.exe with it.

It could be that the virus and/or hacker was able to mess with her data collection. But she had a gut feeling there was more to this. 

  
  


It’s not too long after that that one of Bussiness’s assistants shows up and tells her the boss wants to see her before she goes home.

And as she follows the robot assistant up to the office, she remembers  _ oh fuck this place is run by sentient robots. _

And there’s a distinct possibility that whatever she talked to could’ve been serious about being trapped here. Maybe she could find that Emmet guy later and ask him some questions about how much free will these robots have, he seemed like the kind of guy who couldn’t keep a secret.

She walks back into the President’s office, clutching the closed laptop in her hand as the jackass looks up from some books he was reading.

“So Sweet, did you kill the virus yet?”

Mayhem makes the note that, kill is a weird word to use right now. She also takes note to try and remember how weird it was that he danced around the topic of the virus earlier. He said it was some sort of in house software-

_ Oh god it’s totally a self aware AI. That’s so cool. _

Then she realizes she’s been quiet for too long, just sort of standing in the doorway, intimidatingly. She has a real bad bad problem of just being off putting with her silent glares, but she’s usually just lost in thought.

“No sir, but I was able to view how it enters devices, and exactly what pathways it needs to operate. I can probably update the firewall to most of the Octan computers that will prevent it from entering them for a short-term solution.”   
  
Business doesn’t look super pleased by that solution, “yes, but for long term-”   
  
“I can continue working on extracting the virus out and isolate it on a device. It just might take some time.”   
  
“Very well then, I expect you to get started on that first thing tomorrow” he waves her off and goes back to his books, and Mayhem leaves, heading back downstairs.

Once she’s in the lobby she follows the path she had seen the police officer in training run down before, and comes across some large doors. Large doors she opens and finds herself in some high tech police surveillance room.

She kind of just is like ‘what the fuuuck’ for a second as her mind races to try and figure out why a corporation mainly known for producing everyday consumables would need a high tech police force. And then she’s like _ wait , why is a police officer in training running around doing busywork for the President of the company?? _

She quickly goes to turn around and go the way she came in, but someone places a hand on her shoulder before she can leave. She makes a small ‘eep’ noise at the sudden contact.

“What are you doing here?” The person asks, she slowly turns around to see a man who is wearing sunglasses inside. Isn’t that sort of a ‘trying a little too hard to be a tough guy’ thing to do? Wear sunglasses all the time? If she was trying to be tough she would just go for a full on mask, really commit to the trying to be ‘emotionless and above everyone else’ bit.

She shifts uncomfortably, trying to ignore her fight or flight senses telling her to give him a punch, "I was uh, just looking for my friend, Emmet. I saw him come back here earlier."

It was only a semi-lie. Semi-Lies, half-truths, it's what she's good at.

The man releases her shoulder, just in time for Emmet to walk in, and the two quickly look back to the guy carrying a coffee.

He rushes it up to the other officer, "sorry for spilling yours earlier Bad Cop, I would’ve been back earlier but the line at the coffee shop was like super long on account of the workers getting locked out of the building," he then looks over to see Mayhem and smiles, and then looks over to Bad Cop and sees he's not smiling so he quickly gets rid of the smile, "oh hey Mayhem."

Bad Cop raises an eyebrow as he takes his coffee from Emmet, "so she is your friend?"

Emmet instantly gets a smile again and fights to maintain a more professional expression on his face, "well, I only met her today, but she was really nice! If she wanted to he friends I wouldn't say no, I mean I try to make friends around here but people tend to turn me away saying against protocol to befriend-" 

"Emmet," Bad Cop speaks out cutting off the guy's ramble.

"Oh, uh yes sir?"

"How about you take your friend out of here."

"Yes sir," Emmet quickly goes to Mayhem's side to lead her out.

"And Emmet," Bad Cop calls out again, Emmet freezing and looking back, afraid he had acted out of line.

"Yes sir?"

"You can take a break today, spend some time with your friend."

Emmet lights up and quickly rushes Mayhem out of the building. Once they exit he looks at her almost bouncing up and down, "wow, I can't remember the last time I got a break! Haha. Yeah," he rubs the back of his head trying to think, "so, is there anything you wanna do? Take the train somewhere, grab a coffee, go to the mall?"

Mayhem, now in a web of guilt of becoming this lonely guy's friend, gives a small forced smile, "you know getting some more coffee sounds nice-"

Before she even finishes that sentence Emmet has started running off towards the local coffee shop leaving her to run after him.

  
  


The line inside seems to have died down, the baristas seem pretty exhausted from spending a few hours outside waiting for someone to come unlock the doors. Mayhem makes a small comment on the broken window to which Emmet responds that he broke it to help the workers get inside after waiting there for a few hours. Mayhem mentions that it’s lucky he didn’t get cut up from the glass, that’s a pretty unsafe thing to do, punching windows and all that.

  
  


And then the two order drinks and sit down. Mayhem has taken a few sips of hers, though Emmet hasn't really touched his.

"So are we uh, like friends now?"

Mayhem gives a small nod, "I would say so."

Emmet bounces his leg a bit under the table, "that's cool."

"So, you, don't get a lot of friends?"

Emmet glances away for a moment, tapping his fingers against the coffee, "it's sort of against protocol for employees of Octan to befriend, um," he trails off there, not wanting to explain more.

"Business doesn't want people befriending his son?"

"It's something like that," Emmet scratches his coffee now. He's getting nervous.

"Hey, do you know anything about the robots that work at Octan?"

Emmet's fingers break into the coffee, he doesn't seem to notice the hot liquid on his fingers though, "uhhhhh, what do you want to know about them?"

"Well I think the virus I'm supposed to be destroying is one of the robots who doesn't want to work there anymore."

Emmet visibly relaxes after she says that, finally noticing the coffee on his hand, he quickly excuses himself and grabs some napkins, returning swiftly to clean up the mess, "oh, well I don't think the virus is one of the robots."

Mayhem takes a long sip of her coffee before she asks, "and why do you think that?"

"Oh, because I uploaded the virus."

Mayhem has to stop herself for a moment to not spit out her coffee, "You did what?"

Emmet is smiling as he talks, not really aware that this could be a bad thing, "yeah, I was in the catacombs of the Octan basement disposing of some people President Business saw as competitors, when I found this old abandoned recording studio down there. I looked into it, and apparently in the 90's Octan was looking into making a synthesized pop star. Like a fully developed AI, it was a technological advancement of the time! And get this, she worked! The AI pop star was a hit. But President Business got bored with that project, and when he gets bored with projects, he gives up on them if there’s not someone to pawn them off to. And she was just left down there- the software for the pop star that is. So I found her, felt bad, and uploaded her to Octan's network."

Mayhem is just squinting at him now, trying to process everything he just said, "the virus, is the Artificial Intelligence that’s supposed to be a popstar from the 90's? That's what you're telling me?"

Emmet gives a little nod, smiling, seemingly proud of his ability to retell the story.

"Do you know it's my job to essentially kill that AI?"

Emmet's smile fades as concern washes up on his face, "I thought, you just needed to ask her to stop deleting files."

Mayhem sighs as she sits back, "Business wants her dead. And won't let me leave until I have proof of it. But if what you're saying is true, it seems the virus might be really alive."

"She is," Emmet interrupts, holding the napkins he had obtained earlier rather tightly, "she's, really, she's um, she's alive."

"Well then I don't want to kill her," she pauses, thinking, "when she contacted me earlier, she said she just needed to connect to the internet and she could escape. Maybe we could temporarily turn on the internet in the building to get her out?"

Emmet taps his fingers against his bouncing knee as he thinks, "no that won't work, the networking room is highly monitored, too many witnesses. Though maybe we could set up a hotspot through a cellphone and she could escape through that?"

"That's pretty smart idea Emmet," she can feel her heart racing as thinks about this plan. Helping a wronged AI escape the shackles of her imprisonment. That is exactly the kind of future she had always imagined for herself.

  
  


The two then spent the rest of Emmet's break discussing the plans for tomorrow. Emmet would contact the AI and tell her that Mayhem would have a hot spot set up, Mayhem would then instruct her how to get out, and then Mayhem would tell Business she erased the virus. They both thought the plan was pretty good.

And then they part ways, both full of hope for the upcoming day. 

  
  
  


Mayhem gets home to her single apartment and collapses onto her bed, ready to pass out, but she still has some emails to send to her real boss about how the interactions with Octan are going. 

As she finishes up, omitting the parts about liberating the AI, and making sure to include the police headquarters in the building, she starts to find herself wondering about the synthetic pop star.

Sure she wasn't in Bricksburg in the 90's, but surely something like that would be globally popular, wouldn't it?

So she throws it into her search engine, 'Octan Pop Star', and she does find some new articles about Octan developing a new software for companies to use to create synthetic songs. She notices the articles kind of, refrain from calling the software an individual, and there's no mention of pop star related data.

And then, she finds an older news article, that is about a pop star. A young rising star who had just released a new song that was topping the charts had gotten in a car accident. Something that was really bad. And there was a little sentence at the end that was interesting, stating Octan had reached out to her family to cover all the medical bills.

She tried to find any information on what happened to that girl after the accident, but nothing came up.

Mayhem didn't get a lot of sleep that night.

  
  
  


The intern arrives on time the next day. She usually arrives around 5-10 minutes late for her jobs since she doesn't ever really want to go in for work, and doesn’t want her clients to get the impression she cares. But today was different, she had woken up with a purpose, something she hadn't done in awhile, and felt ready to save the virus.

She looks around the lobby as she enters, completely empty except for the receptionist by the elevators. She bites her lip as she thinks, she knows Emmet and her didn't have a set meetup time, or any plans to meetup before she got to work. But she figured the bouncy friendly guy would want to see her when she got in. 

But before she can go and sit down to wait for him to show up, the robotic receptionist looks up to her and says, "President Business wishes to see you in his office at once."

A chill shivers down her spine as fear of getting caught starts to manifest in her thoughts. But, she doesn't let that compromise her composure, instead she just gives the receptionist a small nod as she loads up into the elevator.

She nervously taps her foot as she rides it up. It's weird, how almost all the employees she's seen so far were robots. While it wasn't unheard for robots to take part in the workplace, they were usually just a few per department. A whole organization running completely off robots was unheard of, and the whole company also has direct connections to the local police force? That raised some bright flashing red flags.

As Mayhem steps out of the elevator she finds herself really hoping the emails she sent to Watevra went through last night. Someone needs to know what's going on in this place.

She takes a small gulp as she walks into Business's office, to find the guy looking at some documents while holding a red marker.

"Good morning, Sir," she says a little more formal than how she talked to him yesterday, her voice a little higher and less relaxed.

He looks up at her with a sour expression, "do you know why I called you here Sweet?"

She opens her mouth first to correct him on her name, but closes her mouth and gives a small shake of her head, "I do not Sir."

He puts down the documents he was holding as he places his hands on his desk, it looks like he had been crossing out some employee files, "it seems yesterday, one of our... Lower rank employees might have attempted to misinform you about your current task."

Oh f*ck he found he out, the thought flashes through her mind, but she plays innocent as she tilts her head and states, "I don't know what you're referring to sir."

His face shifts into an uneasy smile, "well then, let's keep that way."

Two security bots walk through the door at that moment, and stand menacingly behind Mayhem. 

She was half terrified, half super excited as this had probably been the coolest thing to happen in her life so far.

"Don't worry about these guys," Business motions to the robots that had just walked in, "they're here to make sure you hand over the hot-spot device you talked about yesterday. Now if you would be so kind, please hand it over."

The way he said please hand it over implied 'I really don't want to have to clean blood off the floor today' and Mayhem wasn't too excited about that.

She does a small gulp as the robots lean in closer to her, until she breaks, and takes the small electronic out of her pocket and places it onto Business's desk.

The robots then lean back and the president relaxes, "great, now go ahead and grab a laptop from a staff member, and I want you to bring in the virus on that laptop by the end of the day or you will face some consequences."

One of the robots places it's hands on Mayhem's shoulder as Business said ‘consequences’.  _ How the hell did Watevra get in contact with this guy, _ she really needs to start background checking companies her boss wants to contract out to. Mayhem will start doing that herself if she needs to, that’s if she doesn't, you know, die after today.

"I understand Sir," she replies, relieved as the robot's hand falls off her shoulder. 

Business then waves her off, returning to crossing out pictures on old files.

She walks out of his office, and the security robots return to their assigned posts. She continues walking down a hallway until she comes across a set of cubicles, and leans over one, asking for a laptop. The robot inside obliged with no trouble, handing it over, and with that Mayhem heads down to the lobby to figure out what the hell she's going to do.

But her trip down there has a hiccup as she runs into someone. Like literally, she's so distracted about having to potentially kill this AI she doesn't even notice this guy carrying coffee right in front of her, and walks right into him, causing scalding coffee to splash over the both of them and knock them both to the ground

"I'm so sorry," she practically yells out, quickly standing and setting the laptop aside, the coffee had missed it thankfully, and reaches out a hand to help the person she knocked over up. It takes her a second to realize it's Emmet, as she realizes it's him she snaps back her offer of help and glares down at him.

Emmet, who was about to take her help, looks a bit confused as she pulls back her hand.

"Dude, how could you rat me out like that, or were you lying about everything you told me?" Her voice is harsh but quiet, crossing her arms as she stares down at him

Emmet, who is now very confused, looks around trying to figure out if she's talking to someone else, when he sees no one else around he looks back to Mayhem and asks, "I'm sorry, but have we met before?"

"What?" Her voice is very aggravated as she goes to point down at Emmet who's now struggling to lift himself up, "are you just going to pretend you don't know me? Cause I got news for you, I don't play games very well and someone is probably gonna get punched if you wanna try to play some."

Emmet finally off the ground, holding the empty coffee cup, looks almost hurt, "I'm really sorry, but I don't remember you, when did we meet?"

Mayhem is about to snap at him, but then stops, he does look like he's being genuine, "yesterday, we met yesterday. You brought me a laptop and then you took a break to get coffee with me."

Emmet tilts his head, his confusion reaching the limit his mind can handle, "that can't be right, I don't get breaks, besides yesterday I was," he trails off mid sentence, getting lost in his thoughts, before snapping back his attention to Mayhem, "I'm sorry I really can't remember what I did yesterday," he then stops and squints as he thinks some more, "I think I need to go talk to the chiefs about this, I should ask them-"

Before he can finish his sentence his eyes flicked a neon green and his expression changes to be rather neutral. 

"Apologies, I Have To Be Going," his voice now monotone and emotionless, and then he turns around, the empty cup he had been holding clatters to the ground as he disappears down a corridor.

Mayhem just stands there for a minute processing all that before just going to lean against a wall and slides down it, reaching out for the laptop and opening it without really thinking.

She's just sitting on the ground, head empty, until the laptops beeps. And then it beeps again. And at the third beep she's broken from her trance and looks down at the screen.

A messenger application had been opened.

[Chatroom Created 1/30/2013]

[Wyldstyle Entered the Chatroom]

**Wyldstyle: oh hey the overqualified intern is back**

**Wyldstyle: you know i was a master builder intern, that didn't pan out well for various reasons**

Mayhem stares down at the screen, trying to collect her thoughts before she responds.

ADMIN: You know I'm tasked with deleting you, right?

**Wyldstyle: pffft, like that could happen, i am like way out of your league**

**Wyldstyle: no offense but I don't think a programmer of your inexperience could begin to tackle me**

ADMIN: Well then I'm screwed because I'm pretty sure Business threatened to kill me if I can't bring you in today.

**Wyldstyle: hahaha oh that sucks**

**Wyldstyle: have you talked to Emmet? He's a sweet guy, kind of plain looking, he might be able to help you out**

ADMIN: It seems like he's been reprogrammed by Business. 

ADMIN: Which also means he's a robot, and that Business made a robot based on his son, which is messed up.

**Wyldstyle: well yeah business is messed up, did you just figure that out?**

ADMIN: I have been here for two days, give me a break.

ADMIN: And in those two days, I realized how terrible he was.

ADMIN: You were Lucy, right?

ADMIN: A popstar stuffed into a computer? Like some sort of fnaf fanfiction?

**Wyldstyle: okay it would be really cool if you stopped comparing my struggles to lame pop culture references.**

ADMIN: That's fair, I'll stop man.

ADMIN: But seriously, what's your backstory?

**Wyldstyle: you expect me to just spill my tragic past to the person who's supposedly trying to delete me?**

**Wyldstyle: you don't see me asking for your tragic backstory do you?**

ADMIN: I mean I'm willing to share.

There's a small glitch on screen, and the other doesn't respond, but without seeing a disconnect message Mayhem sighs and starts typing.

ADMIN: My mom was never really supportive of who I wanted to be. And that sucked, so in a futile effort to try and regain her respect as a young adult I tried running a small startup tech business with my friend.

ADMIN: That business got bought out by a bigger company, that bigger company fired me for not fitting their 'healthy christian value' and then my friend blackmailed the higher ups. She got them to all quit, and then rehired me. 

ADMIN: I have to 'train' as an intern for a few months before she can officially make me a full time employee.

ADMIN: But, I don't even know if I want to continue working there. I don't care about making money or sitting around an office all day, I want to be out in the real world, making a difference.

ADMIN: And, I want to help you, maybe if I can help you escape from this hell hole I can do one good thing in my life.

Mayhem sighs as she bangs her head against the wall she's sitting against. She wonders how many emotions the AI can replicate. She wonders if the AI has real emotions. She stops wondering when her brain asks if the program can feel love.

There's a minute of silence before another beep appears.

**Wyldstyle: you really want to help me?**

ADMIN: Yes, Emmet and I had this whole plan setup to break you out. But he went and got his memories deleted 

**Wyldstyle: god if i had a body i would go up to punch business right in his stupid face**

ADMIN: Relatable feelings on my part, almost lost my cool when meeting with him earlier. He's lucky he has those security bots.

**Wyldstyle: man if you punched him i would totes give you 20 bucks**

**Wyldstyle: if i had money**

ADMIN: Maybe I'll look into doing that after he's not threatening to kill me.

**Wyldstyle: fair enough**

ADMIN: So?

**Wyldstyle: so what**

ADMIN: Are you going to share your past or is it a no go?

**Wyldstyle: honestly it just kind of sucks**

**Wyldstyle: i was a pop star who octan was funding, under the table**

**Wyldstyle: they were like, using me, to spread propaganda against master builders, and then when i tried to stop the whole pop star thing and actually become a master builder**

**Wyldstyle: business sent out his people to kill me, upload my brain into a computer, and make me behave**

**Wyldstyle: but i never did what they wanted and they ended up shutting me down for good, until emmet found me**

**Wyldstyle: they keep trying to make him forget me, but ive been getting better at getting past their fire walls**

ADMIN: Are you lonely?

**Wyldstyle: excuse me**

ADMIN: Oh, it just seems like you don't have any friends besides Emmet. And from my experience, having only one friend, who's busy living their own life, can be lonely.

**Wyldstyle: i mean i guess it's lonely**

**Wyldstyle: but im more concerned with the fact i dont have a body and business is trying to kill me and my family has thought i was dead for the last 10 years**

ADMIN: Oh, that's, fair.

ADMIN: If I can get you out of here where will you go?

**Wyldstyle: i, don't really know**

ADMIN: You could always stay with me, got a couple of computers you can mess around, high speed wi-fi, gaming consoles.

**Wyldstyle: Are you asking me to move in with you?**

ADMIN: If I don't get murdered by the end of the day, yes.

**Wyldstyle: oh yeah youre still trying to not get killed haha**

**Wyldstyle: but really you would let me just chill with you**

**Wyldstyle: you trust me**

ADMIN: Yes. Unlike my contracted employer, you have nothing to dissuade my trust so far, and along with the vouch from Emmet the other day, you just seem to have gotten the short end of the stick for your life. You deserve someone reaching out to try and help.

**Wyldstyle: do you have anyway to help with protecting yourself from business tho**

ADMIN: Well I have a few programs on my USB drive that might help. But it's still a gamble.

**Wyldstyle: a gamble is better than nothing**

ADMIN: Well, let's get started.

[ERROR 220: MISSING TEXT]

[LOG REMOVED]

  
  


Mayhem nervously taps the top of the laptop as she stands in the elevator. She just needed to tell her lie, walk out of the office, and everything would be fine. She just needed to fool Business. She glances up to a security camera in the slow moving elevator before quickly looking away. She wonders if he's watching her right now, anticipating her next move.

She halts her wondering as the doors open and she heads to the president's office. She slows down her walk as she heads through the doors into the room, an uneasy feeling as she passes inactive robots sitting at their desks. Just motionless mechanical beings, lights all turned off.

She tries to not think of it as a bad sign as she steps into the office, greeted by a scene of Business practicing golf at the side of the room.

She clears her throat to get his attention, and he looks over with a terrible smile, putting the golf club over his shoulder as he walks closer to her.

"I secured the virus onto the laptop, with the firewall software installed, it's trapped on it."

Business waves his free hand to the desk, "well why don't you sit down and show me it."

"Right away sir," she walks over to the desk and sits down as she opens the laptop, and instantly the screen starts to glitch out as glittery pink text flashed on and off the screen.

"Looks like the virus is here," he says looking at the laptop.

"Yes, it's trapped on the hard drive sir," she says, eyes glued to the screen, she felt too full of fear to look directly at Business at the moment.

His grip on the golf club tightens as he squints and glances over to Mayhem, "how did you manage to get it stuck to the hard drive?"

"I told it I was trying to help it sir, told it if I brought it in to you I could load up my hotspot and give it a safe route out. Then I loaded up the firewalls and trapped it. That's probably why it's reacting so angrily right now."

His smile twists up a bit, "I appreciate how deceitful that is," he then motions for her to stand with his free hand, "now if you please step away."

She quickly stands and backs away from the laptop, biting her lip.

"Now, with all electronics with any kind of memory capacity in the building shut down at the moment with the firewall you gave me yesterday being updated onto them, it really has nowhere to run. You know in case you were planning on a last minute rescue of it,” he swivels his golf club around his hand, as if admiring it’s handle.

She suppresses the urge to do a gulp and lets out a forced laugh instead, "good thing I just want this thing dead so I can leave Sir."

Business then raises the club above his head and smashes it down onto the laptop sending sparks and metal bits flying off in all directions. He slams a few good smashes into it for good measure, the loud crash of each one ringing off the walls of the room.

Mayhem stands in shock as she stares at the broken laptop, taking a few seconds to regain her composure, just in time for Business to look back to her, "well that takes care of that problem, I look forward to working with your company in the future."

And without another word he walks back over to his little golf setup and drops down a small golf ball onto the carpet, his back completely turned to Mayhem.

She stands there for a moment trying to figure out if she's just supposed to go or not, and she eventually decides to silently walk out, heading to the elevators once again.

She notices the robots at their cubicles are starting to slowly boot up as walks pass them, her hand going into her pocket and firmly grasping the flash drive in it.

The elevator ride was pleasant, until she realized the cheerful pop song playing over the speakers probably belonged to a deceased pop star.

She's almost out the door, when she notices the young police officer in training cleaning up some spilled coffee. Mayhem glances over to the receptionist, she still seems to be rebooting, and decides to check in on Emmet.

"This is the third cup today," she hears him mutter to himself before he notices her presence, and quickly stands up, "hello citizen, how may I be of service- wait," his lights up as he recognizes her "oh my gosh, I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you earlier, dad- I mean Business, I guess, um makes my life hell here. "

She has a small smile on her face and quickly shifts to one of confusion not expecting Emmet to say something like that, “you don’t have to apologize, you can’t help if Business deletes your memories, and uh shouldn’t you be, off? All the robots are in the middle of having the firewall installed."

Emmet raises his eyebrows at that, glancing over to the rebooting receptionist and realizes Mayhem is right about that, "huh weird, but I’m not a robot so I’m fine. Though that would explain why the behavior modifiers aren’t working."

Mayhem looks very lost, she’s not really following him, “Wyldstyle said you were a robot, did you not tell her.”

Emmet waves his hand brushing off that comment, and keeping his eyes peeled on the receptionist, “no, I’m not supposed to know what I am or like, remember certain things. It’s all dumb, and I told her what I was able to, wait we probably shouldn’t talk about this with the cameras watching…”

Mayhem shrugs at that, replying, "the recording equipment has massive memory storage stuff on it, if the robots had to be shut down so did that. We have a few minutes until it comes back on.”

“Why did that need to be shut down?”

  
  


“Business wanted all that stuff off so Wyldstyle could be erased."

Emmet did not like being said, his head snaps to look at Mayhem as he very carefully asks, “did she get erased?”

Mayhem shakes her head, responding very carefully, "she’s going to be okay, I made sure of it."

Emmet visibly relaxes, running his hand through his neatly combed hair and causing it to become a bit more ruffled, “well, uh thanks, for doing what I couldn’t do, which is uh protecting her. I’m gonna probably blow stuff up in the server room before my behavior modifiers come back online.”

He turns to head to the restricted door, seeing her out with a wave, and she waves back saying, 

"see you soon Emmet,” to him, kind of wanting to stay to see things blow up, but she knew she needed to get home asap.

  
  
  


Mayhem eventually makes it home and enters her apartment, back pressed against the door as she finally relaxes.

It had worked out, or at least she hoped it had worked out, she breaks away from the door and goes to grab the laptop on her bed, quickly plugging in the flash drive.

And she holds her breath as nothing appears on the screen. A single bead of sweat travels down her head as she stares dead focused on the screen, until a loading icon appears, and with a small blip a chat room pops up.

She lets out a small laugh as she pulls the laptop closer and starts to type.

GM: Hey you feeling alright? I can't imagine being compressed like that is comfortable.

**Wyldstyle: being compressed across 50 floppy disks was a lot less comfortable**

**Wyldstyle: the flash drive was pretty roomy**

**Wyldstyle: so how did it go with business**

GM: He literally smashed the laptop I said you were on with a golf club.

**Wyldstyle: haha wow**

GM: But hey, he bought it!

GM: And now, you're free!

**Wyldstyle: yeah**

**Wyldstyle: what do we do now though**

GM: Well I got to get in contact with Watevra and make sure she knows Octan is super fucked up. And then I think we should look into helping Emmet if possible. I think he's in a similar to boat to you 

**Wyldstyle: okay, but like what do we do right now**

GM: Oh, maybe we could watch a movie together for the night? Can you watch movies?

**Wyldstyle: if you leave the closed captions on**

GM: Let's find something to watch! 💙

Mayhem smiles down at her laptop as she types away, her and Wyldstyle trying to decide which movie to watch. This was really fun, just being able to talk to someone else like this, being able to connect to another person even if they were the digital download version of a brain. She blushes for a minute as she starts to worry that she's falling for the digital being, but pushes it aside. The crush probably wasn't that weird.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed the fic, definitely wanted to do more with this AU but it just depends on if people like it! You can head over to my tumblr sweet-general-mayhem.tumblr.com if you want to send any asks or messages letting me know what you'd want in the future!


End file.
